Turf or Stone (16 page)

Katya was ugly-beautiful and very strange. She had a broad, straight nose flattened into her brown face, and eyes and eyebrows that slanted towards the temples. Her clothes were like sacks flopping from her shoulders; her voice had a nasal drag. She seemed to be everlastingly
boiling fish in a large kettle, washing up, or roaming the fields with a book in her hand. Easter met her one autumn day standing in a shower of golden hazel leaves, staring at the red and white signs which marked a jump.

‘What are those?’

He told her. She had thought they were a kind of trap; without adding a word to her abrupt question, she scrambled through the hedge and, looking after her, he saw her squat, strong figure crossing the swell of ploughed meadow beyond, a blue blot against the dry red furrows.

She invited him to her home. He went only once. It was a small, ivy-covered house in Pendoig village. The aunt and grandmother were entertaining a crowd of casual, smiling visitors in the living room. Easter caught a glimpse of their grey, lace-covered heads as they sat at a little round table facing their visitors. He did not wish to go in, so Katya put him in her bedroom while she finished the washing up; he entertained himself by examining the Russian books which were lying in heaps on the bed and floor, and counting the dirty cups and saucers stacked on the washstand.

When finally she said farewell to Easter a few months later, Katya told him that she would have felt really affectionate towards him if, on that day, he had helped her with the washing up. When she had finished, they went for a walk in the woods. It was a cold, fresh, autumn day. A rainbow against the black clouds formed a complete and vivid arch. They passed a pond under an elm tree where a vast sow lay wallowing. The lazy creature seemed dead…. Katya laughed; the wind blew her draggled hair away from her forehead.

As they reached the outskirts of the wood it began to hail. They sheltered, and the stones bounced off their heads and rolled down their necks. Katya said: ‘I’m thirsty, Easter.’

He held out his hands to catch the hailstones, and she licked them from his palms. Then he wanted to make love to her, but she began stooping and gathering up an armload of rotten twigs. She would not stop, for the twigs positively fascinated her and she could not leave them alone. The Russians were very poor; they had to pick up wood for their fires.

When this had gone on too long for his patience, he snatched the twigs from her and threw them down. This made her furious. She ran away, and for a month would have nothing more to do with him.

But one night she came to the Louse Pit and told him she wanted him. She would not go in, so that time they went to an isolated barn. Easter was never under a roof in a gale afterwards without thinking of it. It was calm, then suddenly they heard the wind advancing like a frenzied army along the field; it struck the barn in a frantic, sustained assault, blowing through the slits in the walls until the hay rose in eddies.

Not very long afterwards the Russians moved to London and Easter heard no more of them. Katya was the one person who enjoyed the ridiculous side of Easter’s character. He had only to be absurd and she would lie back helpless with laughter, and when it was over, sit up and wipe her eyes and beg him never to look gloomy again.

When Katya was gone he found a successor in a solemnly immoral young woman who talked too much.
Though handsome, she possessed too many drawbacks, and he could not subdue her. He saw her pulling up roots in a field when he was exercising the horses, a tall, strong creature with a large bosom, a ruddy face, and firm, straight legs. It had been raining, and she stood squarely with a leg in each corner of her skirt, ankle-deep in soil. She wore an overall of clear, watery green over a big coat, and a deeper green woollen cap which glowed in the fine drizzle like a jewel.

The woman, the wet field, the green plants, and her sulky face peering at him over her bent shoulder, made a vivid impression on him. There was nobody else in the field. Solitary, unamiable, she went on with her work. Easter smiled, his white teeth flashed; she scowled, he rode on.

The next day he rode that way again. She was still there, a little farther on, standing resting, her hands on her hips, puffing and blowing at a Woodbine. Easter sniffed: ‘Them cigarettes are dear at the price,’ he shouted impudently, ‘have one o’ mine?’

She grimaced. He chucked one over the hedge and she caught it. They talked until the Woodbine and the Player were both smoked out.

Her name was Lucy, and she lived at Mostone, a nearby village. She had an illegitimate son by a married man. She fairly jumped at Easter, but to hear her talk one would have thought her excessively refined and prudish. For all ‘unpleasant’ words or circumstances she invented genteel names, and all the time she spent with Easter she never shut her mouth. He simply could not understand what it was all about. Great names were mixed up in it, and favours done to Lucy, all for artless admiration presumably.

They quarrelled and parted over the fleas in Easter’s bed. All night long Lucy used to be up and down trying to catch them. She declared she could hear them singing in the mattress, that not only was she ravenously devoured, but they danced on her back and ran deliberately, malicious, all the way up from her toes to her head. She would lie as still as she could for about ten minutes, just twitching and shuddering impressibly now and again; then, having finished as bait, up she would leap, drag off the top rugs and wetting her finger, turn huntress. She caught them as they fled beneath the pillow, as they wildly burrowed for safety; she made Easter hold the candle and burnt them under his nose. In the morning her body would be covered with great purplish blotches. He grew to hate the sight of her, and took his revenge in his own way. One night, when she allowed him no opportunity to come near her, he suddenly jumped out of bed, snatched up a girth and strapped her down among her enemies. Lucy, abandoning her affected vocabulary, lay on her back, cursing from her heart’s depths. It was the end.

The woman who came nearest to occupying a like position to Mrs Emily Queary was a virgin when he met her, and she became very fond of him. Physically, she was the least attractive woman in his life, being undergrown and slightly crooked, but the delicacy and docility she displayed towards him, endeared her to Easter. He was never quite so rough with her as with the others.

Her name was Ann Vey. Her father was a farm labourer, a widower with only one child. He was selfish, affectionate, and tyrannical in his wish that she should not marry.

Easter told her he was a single man. A week later she found out the truth, but she said outright that she was too fond of him to give him up. Night after night she returned home late. She used to hang up her old coat, clean and polish downstairs until her father ordered her to go to bed. He hit her, threatened and coaxed her. It was all the same.

Returning once at one in the morning, she found the door locked. Then she was in a helpless to-do, standing in the porch trying to break in with a hairpin. Her father spoke to her out of the window: ‘You be grown up – you be free. I’ve spoke to you time an’ agen – now you can go.’

She went away and slept in a cart, covering herself with sacks and pea-straw. Nobody saw her the next day or night. Easter did not know where she was. A sergeant visited the cottage and while he was speaking to Vey in the kitchen, Ann walked in, dirty, pale, and in tears. The sergeant listened to the story.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he counselled her.

It made no difference. She went her way. She had a child, but it died. Easter was as unpopular in Pendoig as he had been in Gamus and Brelshope. Stories of his doings and his strange marriage began to go about. He remained indifferent. Instead of drinking at the Pendoig Arms he kept a barrel of cider in the cottage, or if he felt like beer and spirits, rode his bicycle into Salus.

On one of these expeditions he believed he saw an apparition. He began to be tortured by outlandish nightmares, and for hours afterwards he would lie awake, afraid to close his eyes lest it should invite a repetition of the visions, pondering over sights which he was afraid he might one day meet in reality.

One Sunday evening, towards the close of October, two years after Mary’s flight, Matt was leaning over a stable door at Pendoig, gazing into the loose box beyond. There was the sound of a horse munching, and vague soft movements.

Easter led out a bay cob, saddled, and stood waiting for Matt to mount. He straightened himself, rubbing his hands as though they were cold, then, drawing a long breath, turned and looked at the impassive figure of the groom. Easter was looking at him; the eyes of the two men met in a long, hostile stare, and into Matt’s face came a curious tensity as though he had been insulted. The groom’s face, yellower and thinner than it used to be, with a perpetually sullen and gloomy expression, changed not at all, only his eyes intent yet restless played over Matt.

The latter moved forward and gathered up the reins.

The groom stepped back.

‘How long has she been off her feed?’

Easter shifted his gaze.

‘Two or three days, maybe.’

Matt mounted.

‘You take no interest in your work.’

Easter gave a short insolent laugh.

‘I need a change.’

Matt broke into an imprecation.

Easter watched him ride out of the yard. He lit a cigarette, spat and put on his coat. The air was raw. From the pigsty came the heavy grunting of a prize sow. Easter laughed again while he twisted the ring on his finger. He locked up and strode through the yard with all his old graceful ease. The buildings behind him, with their narrow black, slit windows and deep sandstone walls of a mottled pink, were sturdy and threatening, like fortresses. The yard was snug and clean, deep in fresh straw, settling to the night. At the gate a thick-stemmed Spanish chestnut had scattered its leaves in the mud, and one of the men, in a faded jersey, torn breeches and puttees, was sweeping them into a glistening green and yellow heap. He wiped his spongy nose and shook his fingers in Easter’s direction. He was Billy Vey.

The sky in the west was clear and brassy, shedding a metallic light over the fields and buildings which were still wet from midday’s rain. The pond across the lane behind a wooden railing, a big square sheet of water, was trembling in greenish ripples. The horses had just drunk and churned up the mud.

Easter stood against the railings, inhaling smoke and
watching the ducks scramble ashore, where a young boy with a pan and a hazel switch in his hand waited to drive them into the duck pen.

‘Lord, what a din!’ he thought, listening to the raucous voice. The boy waited until they were all ashore, then swished the stick and drove them before him, waddling pendulously and shaking their tails.

The farmer’s wife, hatless, peering, and stout, ran down the garden path, looked over the wall, and flinging her voice in front of her as she returned, screeched: ‘Here comes dad, and the kettle not on!’

Jones would not turn his eyes in Easter’s direction. He felt a great contempt for him, and righteous indignation against his way of living. The farmer was a Plymouth Brother, known as Slimy Sid. He shut his heavy front door with a clang upon the lewd man bare-headed in the lane, who smoked and stared across the fields.

At length, Easter moved off. He avoided Pendoig village, and made his way to the cottage by a field path which ran along the edge of a small, abandoned quarry. Passing it, he peered into the red hollow filling with darkness, and chucked his cigarette end into the shadows.

Entering the cottage, he kindled a fire and ate some bread and cheese. Then he drew a jug of cider which he stood on the hob to warm. He removed his boots and leggings. By rights he ought to have gone up to the stables again at eight o’clock, to take a final look round, but he did not intend to do it. He sat down before the fire, put on a log, and reached for the jug. He thought he would get drunk.

It was quite dark; it poured with rain, which ceased after a while, and the lights of passing cars stencilled the
lines of the window frames on the walls in rapid transitory shapes. The shadow of Easter’s head, with its stiff, tufty hair and harsh features, his bowed shoulders, and the hand holding the jug, was flung by the quivering firelight on the corner of the ceiling and the wall. There was no lamp in the room. Hours passed. A man came striding down the road past the cottage and on up the pitch to Pendoig.

It was between nine and ten, a night of cloudy moonlight, a pale, shifty luminosity which seemed to emanate from the wind rather than the sky. The man turned into the Pendoig Arms. Coming into the light, he was seen to be a great, swinging chap with bold, full eyes under an overhanging brow, a longish nose and a saucy mouth. His chin was pressed against his neck; his hands were in his pockets. His age was about thirty-five. He wore a shabby overcoat of some fuzzy material, no hat, and carried a small suitcase.

The only other person in the bar was a pale, refined man in smooth, dark clothes, whose black moustache was twirled into points. He looked at the stranger flatly, then turned away his eyes as though he was not interested. After a second he looked again. The stranger was brilliantly handsome. The top of his head was flat, covered thickly with damp, auburn hair, and the jaw just beginning to thicken, still perceptibly ran up to the ears in a delicate sharp curve.

‘Good evening,’ said the pale man in a careful voice.

‘Good evening,’ replied the handsome one.

‘Dark night.’

‘Blowing up for more rain.’

The pale man thought before he acted. He leant forward, his hands on his knees.

‘Excuse me, haven’t we met before?’

‘Not that I know,’ the stranger answered, hanging his coat over the settle. The pale man persisted. He actually took out a pair of spectacles, perched them on his nose and leant still closer.

‘I’m sure I know your face.’

‘I have three sons. Maybe you’re mistaking me for one.’

‘Really…’ exclaimed the pale man, sarcastically, ‘how old are they?’

‘Forty-four, forty-five and forty-six,’ said the stranger very quickly. He exploded into laughter, turned crimson, and spat into the fire.

The pale man sat back offended. He took off his spectacles and began to polish them in a finicky way with a bit of red silk. The other’s laugh roared round the room and expired in a glorious exhibition of regular white teeth.

Suddenly the pale man moved in his seat: ‘Rasp!’ he shouted, as if he were calling a dog.

‘Eh?’ said the other, starting, ‘are you mad?’

‘I was only calling your dog.’

‘I haven’t a dog,’ said the stranger, with a mischievous glance.

‘My wife has, though,’ he added, ‘does that help you? It’s one of them little snapping yappers. It’s useful, though. What d’you think I do when my feet get cold? I put ’em in the dog basket and the dog lies on ’em.’

‘You had a dog,’ said the pale man; ‘how you jumped!’

‘Anybody would’ve.’

The pale man again donned his spectacles. He was incessantly playing with them.

‘I’ve placed you now,’ he announced.

‘Allelujah,’ shouted the stranger.

The landlord walked into the room, exposing a gold front tooth in a ready smile.

‘Did yer shout?’ he inquired, his head poked forward.

‘This gentleman did.’

‘Bring me a pint o’ beer, a packet o’ clubs and a box of England’s Glory,’ said the stranger in no strange dialect.

The landlord did so.

‘Quiet for a Sunday,’ said the handsome man, paying.

The landlord looked at him. He winked.

‘Playin’ skittles.’

‘Bloody heathen.’

The landlord grinned, showing another gold tooth, and went away. The pale man nodded, as if to himself: ‘Well done, bravo, for a stranger. He showed a couple – when it’s three you stands a pint. Rare, you understand?’

‘Aren’t you going to tell me my name?’ asked the stranger, stretching his long legs to the fire.

‘John Lewis.’

‘That’s right,’ said Lewis. He drank. ‘I – I – what a memory you must have! Don’t go shouting it about, though.’

‘Have you been up to something?’

‘No. I came down here to see one man and I don’t want anybody else. See?’

‘All right.’

‘Who’re you?’

‘Name’s Trefor. You wouldn’t know me; your dad did.’

Lewis was smoking. He pushed the packet of cigarettes across the table.

‘No, thanks,’ said Trefor, ‘I’ll have a pipe.’

Lewis stared at his knees.

‘Old Rasp died years and years ago. I left ’un down here with Tom Williams.’

‘He’s dead, too. Left the farm to his brother, who sold it five years back to Sidney Jones.’

‘Ah, did ’e?’

Lewis occasionally lapsed into dialect and then his speech lost its vulgarity.

‘I come to see Rasp once. The bones was stickin’ through ’is ’ide and ’is coat – you know what a coat ’e ’ad?’

‘Like a mat.’

‘Ay. Well, he was all over sores. I took ’un out and shot ’un.’

He fingered his empty mug.

‘Have one with me?’

Trefor shook his head again.

‘You’re not very companiable.’ He shouted, and ordered another beer. After a pause, during which he gulped and puffed and examined the room from the bacon rack to the skirting board and set his watch by the brass-faced clock, he remarked that the place was changed. This led to a narrative of his unbridled senseless youth, and he recounted how one night they had drunk the previous landlord stupid, put him to sleep on the settle and served themselves. The landlady came downstairs at two in the morning, found her husband snoring and Lewis in the cellar.

‘This very settle,’ said he. He kept calling for more beer and tipping it down without showing any difference. He grew white when he was drunk, crimson when he was laughing.

‘I can guess who was with you that night,’ observed the pale man, whose cold, grey eyes were fixed on Lewis with
a kind of severity.

‘You’re a bloody clever chap,’ said Lewis. ‘Who then?’

‘Easter Probert. He that’s groom to Mr Kilminster.’

‘You’re right. And he’s the man I want to see. Can you tell me where he lives?’

‘Nothing like coming sixty miles to see the devil,’ Trefor muttered. ‘Yes, he lives in that white cottage bottom of the pitch.’

‘I must’ve passed it. Oy, more beer!’

‘That went down quick,’ said Trefor.

‘They do with me.’

The landlord brought another pint. He looked at the clock. It was ten.

‘Put ’un down quick, case the copper comes.’

‘He’s round these parts,’ Trefor observed, getting up. He turned a check muffler, very neat and clean, around his neck; having finally doffed the spectacles, he put them gingerly in his pocket and slowly blew his nose. Lewis also put on his coat and the two went out together. It was not raining. They stood a moment talking.

‘You still in the same business?’ Trefor asked.

‘Oh, yes. Had a bit of a dairy for a while, but I went back to the old line. More used to it. Has Easter been long with that Kilminster?’

‘Five or six years.’

‘Long time for him. Must be doing well…’

‘Well, I don’t know. People talk. But we don’t know much about him. He’s given up coming here. Not sociable, you understand. That was a queer marriage of his.’

Lewis exclaimed. He seemed greatly taken aback.

‘Married, is he? Never told me. Who did he marry?’

‘Stranger. She was brought up among the gentry or something. It didn’t turn out too well. That’s only talk, though.’

‘Well, I shall see for myself,’ muttered Lewis, swinging the suitcase.

‘Oh, she’s not down there; she’s over at Kilminster’s. Probert’s half the week there, half here.’

‘Well, that’s bloody queer…’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah.’

‘Well, goodnight to you.’

‘Goodnight.’

The two men walked away in opposite directions, dogged by their pale shadows.

The sky was obscure, broken, yet curiously symmetrical; clouds radiated from the moon like rays of darkness. Descending the steep pitch, Lewis could hear the river washing among the branches of a fallen willow. From the village behind him came the measured howls of the dogs baying to the moon. A woman would have been afraid out here alone in this mysterious night, or she would have felt unhappy, restless, disturbed. An imaginative man might have paused on the brow of that hill – Lewis was not so made.

He possessed plenty of animation, charm, a sort of blowsy vigour, a destructive dreaminess which under mined all the practical side of living, and a wild, wanton humour. But his visions were all solid and selfish, they did not arise like ghosts from immaterial, intangible beauty, they never evoked melancholy, mild fear or maddening panic; they arose like aldermen, mayors, and corporations. Thus John Lewis saw himself a highly successful, wealthy man. The reflection was
enough; he was satisfied; reality might go to the devil. In short, he was at least mentally ambitious. He and Easter had few characteristics in common, and here lay the first great difference: Easter had no ambition of any sort whatever, only a primitive longing to see that he obtained an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Easter’s imagination was purely visionary and unconnected with cupidity. Lewis loved, worked, revelled, ate, and slept without noticing where; from earliest childhood Easter had moments when he was arrested by moving wonder at a vast earth and scarcely comprehended sky. Therefore, when he might have lingered, Lewis descended the hill briskly, and, having paused a moment only to light a cigarette, knocked on the cottage door.

Easter opened it, staggering slightly, one hand raised to his ear which was ringing like a chapel bell. He was half drunk, with haggard, brilliant eyes which could make nothing of the dark form in an overcoat.

‘What d’you want?’

His tone was rude and harsh.

‘Get a light and ’ave a look at me,’ Lewis replied, holding the cigarette away from his face.

‘I don’t want to look at yer damned mug,’ shouted the groom, preparing to shut the door.

Lewis came forward.

‘Easter, yer old b—’

‘God, it’s Jack!’

Lewis burst out laughing.

‘Ay, that it is,’ he exclaimed, grabbing Easter by the arm and shaking him gently.